In opening a three-game series and a 10-game road trip Friday night with a 5-1 win over the San Diego Padres, the Seattle Mariners got a good start from rookie pitcher Logan Evans.
They’ll ask Emerson Hancock to walk in Evans’ shoes on Saturday when they try for a series win in Ssn Diego.
Hancock (1-2, 6.91 ERA) is coming off an 11-5 loss at home against the New York Yankees, who roughed him up for seven runs on eight hits over five innings. Hancock walked four and struck out five but was ultimately done in by giving up three homers, two of them during a six-run fifth inning.
Hancock has dealt with lots of traffic in his 28 2/3 innings this year. His WHIP (walks plus hits divided by innings) is an ugly 1.71.
“Losing (stinks) and it’s part of it,” Hancock said Monday night. “And for me, I didn’t feel like I did my job. I made a couple of mistakes and they made me pay for them. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to keep going after them.”
Hancock has faced San Diego once, giving up just one run on two hits over five innings in a no-decision with three walks and three strikeouts in a 6-1 Mariners win on Aug. 9, 2023. He’s slightly been better in starts against National League opponents during his brief MLB career, pitching to a 4.11 ERA in seven outings.
Seattle entered this series fresh off a 1-5 homestand. But Friday night, it looked more like the team that pieced together nine straight series wins prior to getting swept by Toronto and dropping two of three to the Yankees. Its offense rapped out 10 hits, getting homers from J.P. Crawford, Rowdy Tellez and Cal Raleigh.
The Mariners figure to face a tough challenge in Nick Pivetta (5-2, 3.05), who’s coming off a rare bad performance. In losing 9-3 Sunday at Colorado, Pivetta was ripped for six runs and seven hits in four innings, walking two and striking out five.
“This is just a one-off and forget it,” he said after that start. “Just flush it and move on to the next one.”
But Pivetta has been nearly invincible at home this year, going 4-0 and allowing just four runs in 25 1/3 innings. He’s also pitched well in five career outings against Seattle, posting a 2-2 record with a 3.23 ERA and whiffing 40 batters in 31 1/3 innings. But he’s allowed six homers and the Mariners have walloped 59 long balls this year, good for seventh in MLB.
Pivetta and the Padres will hope for more offense than they generated Friday night, when they managed just one run out on eight hits. None of those hits came off the bat of Manny Machado, ending the second-longest hitting streak of his career at 14 games.
It was a 180 from San Diego’s previous six games, which saw it average nearly nine runs per game, highlighted by a 21-run explosion on May 10 in Colorado.
–Field Level Media
